Unlocking The Truth About Modern Masculinity (with Justin Baldoni)

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Hey everybody, welcome to Love Life. We have something special today, an actor, a filmmaker, special guest Justin Baldoni, who so many of you know from his role as Raphael Solano in Jane the Virgin. He's also directed the films Five Feet Apart and Clouds, and he's on a crusade to help men redefine their masculinity and become more vulnerable, to open up, to communicate better. So many things that women are saying to me all the time they wish men would do. So this is going to be an amazing episode, not only to listen to yourself, to understand men better, but also to send to any of your male friends who might be interested in learning a little more about what may be stopping them from healing, from being vulnerable, and from relating in ways that would make their lives much much better. The full interview and exclusive member Q&A portion is available inside the Love Life Club and you can get a 14-day free trial by going to joinlovelife.com youm can set up your profile in 60 seconds and have access to the whole thing. But we are releasing the interview portion here on the Love Life podcast. So enjoy and allow me to present to you Justin Baldoni. [Snid] what's up, everybody? Welcome to Love Life. Today is a special day because I have a guest who I've been really excited to introduce to you for a long time. For many of you, you will know him already. His name is Justin Baldoni. He is an actor, a filmmaker, a writer, a speaker, and someone who caught my attention for the work that he was doing to help men in becoming more vulnerable, in relating differently to their masculinity. And it was an interesting thing because as I watched his work, as I watched him speak in front of audiences, it became very clear just how much of an issue so many men were having with the kind of work he was doing, as evidenced by the fact that it's predominantly women who follow this man, and of course it's men who need to do the work. So I am extremely excited to bring you this gentleman today. He has sat with me. Justin, thanks for coming, man.

I love when I'm called a gentleman. I appreciate it. Yeah, so nice to be here. I love that we have the primarily female audience in common.

Yeah.

Which is interesting.

One of us, I suppose intentionally, and the other a sort of byproduct of the fact that I think what you say relates so much to women's experience of men.

But you know what I think is interesting is recently you shared a video of a man in your audience who was brave enough to ask a very vulnerable question. and I loved your advice. And I was just, I was thinking about like that man sitting in a sea of these women who was willing to be like, I'm really hurt. I'm like devastatedly hurt. How do I get past that? She moved on and you gave him beautiful advice. And so I wanted to say in person, kudos to you, because sometimes the comment on the Instagram, it's not the same, but like I really appreciated the way you spoke directly to him, and I think that's probably rare for you to get to speak to men in that capacity.

You know, it's ironic because when I start, and thank you for saying that, 'cause it means a lot. When I started out, I was working with men exclusively, and this was 15 years ago now. I then ended up working with women pretty much exclusively for a long time. And I hadn't, it's an interesting dynamic when a guy comes to one of my events and is brave enough to put his hand up because I've very much in the last few years been in the routine of answering women's questions. So then to switch to a guy, what's interesting.

I saw you going through that process. I saw you having to like be like, okay, wait, there's another answer for this.

And I think there's even an unconscious energy shift in me. Like I realized there's a, It's more direct. There's a different way of addressing it.

Why did you switch from men to women?

I had. So I'd spent two, three years working.

With men in the same kind of capacity, dating advice, helping men find.

Helping. Exactly. Helping men empower men, helping them find their confidence, helping them. And it got to a point, honestly, where there were a couple. It was a cocktail of things working with guys in that capacity. At the time, I was coming across certain guys that I didn't. resonate with who were also doing the same thing. And there was a whole side of that world that was a bit...

This was 15 years ago.

To me, yeah.

Okay.

So it was like the...

This is back in the Neil... Neil Strouse.

Community thing was a big thing.

Yeah.

And so it... I had a very good relationship with women growing up. I mean, I was, you know, my mum and my aunt, they're identical twins. They raised, you know, between them, Seven kids and, you know, they we loved them to pieces. And my cousins, two of my cousins that were my best friend in the world were female. And I was, you know, so I grew up so close to women. I didn't relate to the us versus them.

Yeah.

Construct. Yeah. Even what I could relate to was being really bad at talking to girls. I could relate to that part of it because when I was a teenager, the way I describe it is I was always being chosen. I was never doing the choosing. I would end up going out with someone because someone badgered me enough to be like, will you go out with my friend? Will you go out with my friend? Will you go out with my friend? You know the way people do in high school. And eventually I went, yeah, I suppose I would.

Lucky you that you even were in that situation. I wasn't even in the situation where anybody was asking me to go out with anybody. Really?

Yeah, but no, I think that's interesting.

People would find that hard to believe, I imagine. I think people would find it hard to believe that you have a hard time talking to women. I was imagining the millions of women rolling their eyes, like, really? Matthew, you had a hard time talking to me.

No, I was definitely afraid of rejection and of approaching, you know, it's where my initial kind of, what I saw as this situation, a lot of the advice women were being given, there was a, you know, book called the Rules that came out for women a long time ago. It was very, very popular. And there were some parts of it that I liked, but there were other parts of it that didn't ring true to me as a guy, because, you know, there was one part that said, if a guy doesn't come over to you, he's not interested. And I used to think, that's literally the opposite for me. If I like you, you're probably the hardest person in the world for me to talk to. And that inspired me early on to be like, oh, there's a, you know, I actually might have something to say here that's fresh and new. And so that was when I started tiptoeing into the world of, that's awesome. and I would say to women, I don't really know you or understand you, but I do understand a little bit about what's going on the men's side. And one of the things that interested me about what you do is I feel like, or a part of what you do, 'cause you wear a lot of hats, that you have really spent a lot of time going deep in your understanding of men and what's behind the way they act and the way they behave. I'm curious, is there something, what do you think would be most surprising to women about what you've learned from men? Because I always think there's a lot of assumptions made by women about what men are like. In working with a lot of men, is there something you think women would find surprising to discover about why men are the way they are or why they do certain things, or just that they are a certain way that women don't realize they are?

Oh yeah. We are very sensitive. Men are very sensitive. And I don't think that, well, I think that any woman who's been in a relationship with a man, like a close one, knows that. I don't know to the extent many women know how sensitive we are. There's a study I cite in my last book, Man Enough, where they actually took men and women and they showed them images. And they timed, they had them hooked up to sensors and then they timed their reaction to the images and how their body processed what they saw. And they were pretty graphic images. And what they discovered was that men the first time reacted quicker emotionally than women did. And then the second time, the reaction time slowed, and the third time and the fourth time. And so the men were literally training themselves to be desensitized to whatever they were about to see, whereas the women stayed sensitive. So I think biologically, just naturally as human beings, we're on the same page. We are every bit as sensitive as women. The difference is, is because of socialization, because of the way that men have been trained and programmed, we've been told that sensitivity and vulnerability is weakness, that these are feminine traits. We have an antagonistic relationship to the feminine, both in women and in ourselves. And so we numb those things. Bell Hooks, the late great Bell Hooks, called it soul murder. Where she said the first act of violence that men commit in a patriarchal society is not violence against women, it's violence against themselves when we numb ourselves by cutting ourselves off from our emotions. So that is the desensitization. And in reality, we are very sensitive. We just don't, one, know it and two, know how to handle those feelings because we're not allowed to have them. and we certainly can't show them to women and we 100% can't show them to other men, so where do they go? They get buried. So I wrote a book about it. There's a bunch of things that I think women would be surprised about. In fact, one of the things I was surprised about was how many women read my book to understand men and how many women reached out to me personally who had been very hurt by men. We could cast a blanket statement and say that I argue the majority of women have been in relationships with men that have been hard or harmful, or we know one in four, one in five women around the world are victims of sexual assault and it gets worse from there. So I think that there is a lot of trauma done to women at the hands of men. And what I found interesting was how many women wrote me and said, for the first time in my life, I actually feel compassion for men. So I didn't realize what you go through and how this system that I thought was only hurting me is actually hurting you. And in fact, it's the reason why you're hurting me. So there's, I mean, we go on and on. There's so many traits I think women would be surprised to discover. about men. We just don't know how to show it.

It's a great answer. And I, whenever I think about how women have to put up with men, I always think men also have to put up with men. And it's different, very different.

Yeah.

But if you look at, like, what makes life hard for guys growing up.

Yeah. Like, it's men.

Men are a nightmare. Yeah.

It's boys.

Yeah. When you look at the insecurities that men have about their strength or not being able to handle themselves or the kinds of things that men do, I often see it when I just look at male groups.

Oh yeah.

And I look at how, I make a mental note when I see guys doing something that I go, a group of female friends together would never do that. They might have their own version of it, but they would never do that. The idea of like, you know, I've told this story before where I walked into a classroom at school. I was about, what was I, like 16, 17? And I remember I like did my hair, I like slicked my hair back. This day I'd been growing it long.

Cue the picture.

Somewhere there must be a picture of this. But I, I slicked it back. I looked like Patrick Bateman from American Psycho.

All right.

I thought it looked good, but I walked into the common room at school and a friend of mine pointed at me and he said, what the fuck have you done with your hair?

Oh man.

But he like blew, like loud enough so that everyone in the room heard. And I remember feeling such.

Oh God, I felt that for you.

Embarrassment.

Yeah.

That what was funny is I went straight to the toilets as the first chance I could get and like tried to fix it and put it back. And this guy wasn't some random bully.

No, no, no.

This guy was like, you know, one of my buddies. Yeah. But when you're that age, you don't necessarily see that behavior as not normal. You Just see it as like, oh, I shouldn't have done that. That was really dumb. That was like, what was I trying to do there?

Starts younger though. I see it, my son is five.

Tell us about that.

It's starting in his ages. He got made fun of, he has long hair like me, and one of the boys called him a girl for wearing his hair like me. It was interesting because at first it was like, you wanna wear a man bun like daddy? And it was super cute, and he did. And then one day he didn't want to do it anymore. At four years old. And I was like, well, what happened? And come to find out it was because another boy said something to him, or it was because the other boys were wearing their hair shorter. And it starts very, very early. And it's hard because that stays with us our entire lives. Really though, what it comes down to is I think it's us boys policing other boys for taking care of their appearance, for having appearances that could look feminine, right? Long hair, girls have long hair for four or five year old boys, unless you're in a class where everybody's got long hair. So that's weak. And so we start to just go into these different directions of boys do this, girls do this. Anything that isn't what boys do, is what girls do and we're antagonistic to each other starting so young. Like, do you remember I had a sign that said, no girls allowed. No girls allowed, right? It's like the basis of every like, really young. 80s, 90s, you know, like young movie. It's like no girls allowed. Stranger Things recently did it. Like there was a girl in the like, in the club. Like, this isn't okay. Why? I mean, where do we learn this stuff? It's not all biological. We also learn it from our parents, we learn it from culture. And yet at the same time, I do think it's important to note that there are differences. It's okay that there are differences, that there are biological differences, that there are sociological differences. There's just all kinds of differences. And there's a spectrum across the board. But we have to appreciate those differences instead of being antagonistic to them. And so what I tell my son in that situation, and what you probably wish somebody would have told you, is you can wear your hair however you want. Boys have long hair too, look at your daddy. Your daddy has long hair. You can do whatever makes you feel good. Don't let the boy that made fun of you take away what brings you joy. Because then what starts to happen is we start to perform. We start to, it's the beginning of us putting on our mask, the beginning of us putting on this like, image where we have to impress other boys, which is why it's so funny when you go to the gym, if you ever ask yourself, like, who are you working out for? Who do you think men are really working out for? Do we think men are working out for all the women that are watching this? Do we really think that women need us to look like Adonis's? Or are we working out for men? Are we working out for respect? Of course, yes, women are attracted to certain bodies. But like, if you look at all the beautiful women in the world and the supermodels and all of this, at the end of the day, as you know, having an amazing body is very low on the list of traits you want in a husband or a partner. Those things fade over time. I don't know any 80 or 90 year olds that are ripped. Like, in the few, Jack Lalanne, he was amazing. But he was also a health nut and exciting and funny and he had a personality. Like those things are way above bodies, but yet we obsess over bodies. So we're not doing it for women, we're doing it for men.

And I suppose there's an element of trying to control the things that you can control. Where can I exert control to try to bring up my status in a group? Power. And one of the areas that men struggle with, and this is one that's perpetuated by women, is with their height.

Oh, that's tough.

Because, you know, like, there's, when you, like, if, if you have a video on YouTube that's, like, got a microphone in women's faces and it's like, you know, honestly speaking, would you prefer a guy to be six foot two or five foot five? Or would you date a guy? Would you reject a guy because of his height? And You've got woman after woman after woman saying, yeah, I don't date short guys. Then that also is feeding into this idea that I'm not man enough if I'm not a certain height. And therefore, I need to go to the gym and work out like an insane person to compensate for that. Or I have to be aggressive, or I have to. So it's coming from all sides.

Height, money, penis size, muscles. All men are doing all day long are comparing themselves to other men. especially in the single world, because they think they have to turn themselves into something in order to be attractive to a woman. Just because a man's not six foot, like, doesn't mean he's a good partner. No, there's room for everybody, and everybody has different tastes. We just have to sometimes get out of our own way, because we have images and the entertainment business and media and social media and all of these things being programmed into our brain all the time telling us what the ideal man or woman or person looks like, telling us what's sexy and what's attractive. But if we stop and we look at it, the people that are feeding us all of that information, they're businesses that are profiting off of us. They're profiting off of our insecurity. They're profiting off of us feeling like we're less than or like we're not enough. We're users in a video game. We're being played. And then we're taking that into our dating lives and our marriages. And decisions in the world.

And the things we spend our life with.

Yeah, what happens in virtual reality, I don't believe can be applied in reality. And yet that's oftentimes what's happening.

Do you therefore think that people should date outside of what they find conventionally attractive, even if at first it feels unnatural to do so?

No, I don't think that I can give a blanket statement. I think that this conversation is super nuanced too, because not everything applies to every woman and not everything applies to every man. Just like not every man is hyper masculine, not every woman is super feminine. Like there is this spectrum. What I do think is the most important thing is questioning what you're attracted to and why versus just saying this is what I want. I like blondes who are 5'9. Okay, so that means your wife walks in and she's 5'6 and a redhead, you're just gonna ignore her? I'd say to another man or like a brother, I think we have to challenge these conceptions of what we find attractive. For a lot of men, what do you find attractive? I would argue what you find attractive is one of the first porn images you saw when you were 10 years old. And you've been chasing that for your entire life. It could be anything. We don't know what it is. But we have to question where those things come from because I think a lot of it has been programmed into us. And a lot of, I think, dating, and I know what you're working on, is deprogramming. It's unlearning all the things we thought we knew so that we can finally be open and ready to find our partner versus having our partner fit this perfect description of what we thought we had and then you're just gonna keep missing it and keep missing it. Oh, it's close, it's close. It's like that Seinfeld episode where it's like the toe. There's something about her toe that bothered him, right? The whole episode is about the toe. It's like, but what about everything else?

That's hard for people to get out of their own way in that way, right? Because they have been so conditioned to treat dating like it is this, optimization game where you find someone and they're kind of close and then you go, ah, no, I can still optimize more here. And then you switch them out and.

I can't tell you how many men I've had this conversation with. And my own friends, my own circles.

Can you, I think it would be fascinating for women to kind of hear how that conversation goes behind closed doors.

It's hard to have, again, it's such a, it's such a tricky conversation. because there are so many variables at play. It's almost like in a science experiment, you have to remove each of these variables to figure out what the actual thing is. So before I think you can even have this conversation, I think you have to have the conversation of paralysis of choice, which is a studied phenomenon. For anybody who's not familiar, it started with, I think there was a study that was done with yogurts in a grocery store. Like flavors.

Yep.

And they asked people to pick. And it started with, you know, hey, here's five flavors. Which one is your favorite? Or which one do you want to buy? And they'd pick. But if you give them 12 flavors or seven flavors or 20 flavors, suddenly they can't pick. And then whatever they do pick, they have instant remorse that they made the wrong decision. But up to five, you didn't have that. So this is where this idea of paralysis of choice comes in. You combine that with the psychology and the science behind dating apps, which is the same science that goes into making casino games, which is called random reward theory, which is basically you don't know what's gonna come next. And so while you're dating, Right, while you're looking for your partner, which is survival, your brain is channeling and signaling your dopamine receptors to like go off. And at the same time, you're getting dopamine hits because you don't know what you're gonna get next. So it's a gamified version of life. So it's already exciting when you're at a bar and you're looking for somebody and somebody's attractive or you see somebody at the grocery store, like you get the same feeling. in your brain, but when you put that on an app and you gamify it, you then have like this triple quadruple dopamine rush and you're stuck on the app because you don't know what you're gonna get next. You combine those two things, paralysis of choice and random reward theory into a single environment, how are you ever gonna find your person?

Right, 'cause you're not just paralyzed, you're enjoying the short term of it. And now you're stuck.

And then you're addicted. and it's the same thing that's happening with social media. That's why landing pages don't have an end. You can keep scrolling forever because they want you to use the app as long as possible. The more you use the app, the more they can sell ads. It's just like, it's like one of those old PSAs on NBC, like the more you know, the reason I say it is because I think so long as you know it's a game, then play it. But if you don't know it's a game, that's where it's dangerous.

So if you're taking a guy And that's kind of the starting point that creates the context, this decision paralysis and this short-term reward. What are they then saying to you?

In general, they're feeling like they keep meeting the person who's close to the one. They have all of these things they love, but maybe there's one thing missing. Or the attraction is just not, there's just something off, there's just something off. Or it'll be great and then she'll say something or do something and he will just know that it's not right. And oftentimes the conversation goes into what the thing is, what it made him feel, and I'll challenge him and I'll ask him if it's really about her or if it's about him. I think that the biggest issue that I see in men is that they're not doing their own work. And they're not really going into, well, what is it that is keeping me from being fully present in this relationship? What is it that's keeping me from jumping in completely? What is it, why am I triggered by that thing that she does? Or why does that, I've had a man say, well, it repulsed me. Well, that's a strong word. Generally, the things we're repulsed by have nothing to do with the person. Most of the time, the things that we're put off by have nothing to do with the other person. They have to do with our reaction to the other person, which comes from our own trauma, from our own belief systems, and from the things that have happened to us.

Is there a pattern in those things that when a guy feels repulsed or feels contempt for something they experience, because I think that's a very common one. There's this feeling of contempt over something that's way out of proportion to the thing that they're actually experiencing or when they're turned off. Or is there a, there are obviously many, many different deep and intricate reasons where, why someone might be feeling that they go way back. But do you think there is a very common source of that? that you see in men?

I think the common source is that it triggers an area they haven't been brave enough to explore. They haven't been willing to look at why the relationships haven't worked, why they've spent two years with a person, found everything wrong with them and then left, why they were so excited at the beginning and then every single time Every relationship ends the same way. Why even after they break up, they have a hard time letting the person go? It's work that has to be done. It's because they're entering the relationship not whole. It's because we've been sold, especially here in America, this myth that we're looking for our other half, which I think is perhaps the most detrimental thing that's ever happened in the history of romantic relationships. Two halves do not make a whole. They make two empty halves that are gonna be using the other person to try to fill up and then there's an illusion of a whole and then the whole goes away and they realize, oh, well, it must be that person. It can't be me. Oftentimes it is not the other person, it's us.

Do you have a sense of like when you're dealing with guys who are in that exact spot? And I think there are, you know, here where we are right now in LA, there are so many people who find themselves in that position because many of them have choice.

Yeah, 'cause we're in the land of superficial wokeness. We're in the land where everybody wants to appear that they've done the work, but they haven't.

So they're saying the right things.

We're, what's it called? The land of feminist fuckboys.

We did a video recently that we titled, what did we title it? Spiritual Fuck Boys. Spiritual Fuck Boys.

Well think about it, it makes perfect sense, right? You're dealing with men who, look if you move here, you have gifts, whether you're extremely good looking or you're funny, you're talented in some way, you're an artist, you're coming, you're here, this is where you want to be. You want to be here, you want to be in New York, you want to be in one of these places, so you have this, this concentration of arguably some of the best looking creative talented people in the world in one place. As we know, those people have identical insecurities and traumas as the bottom. The top 1% of attractive people have the same insecurities as the bottom percent, right? So here you are, you have all these people, you have all these men, Most have never had to really work for relationships because everything comes to them. Never had to really develop personalities, if you will. But because we're here, let's just take the top 1% of personality and attractiveness, we're all here in LA. And we know that vulnerability is an example. Let's just use some of my work. that women have a desire for an emotionally sensitive, open, vulnerable man. Because so often they meet men who are not.

Right.

Well, it makes perfect sense if you are somebody who's smart and creative and attractive, where you can start to realize, oh, if I am vulnerable with a woman, then I will get my cookie. It's another version of Pavlov's dog. If I ring the bell enough and I put a stake in front of you, eventually you're gonna start to salivate. And so if I know that if I can use vulnerability to attract a mate, well then I can sleep with as many women as I want. My co-host on the Man Enough podcast, Liz Plank, who is a brilliant, smart, funny journalist, Right? Told me that the most abusive relationship she was ever in was with a man who she met that was wearing a feminist t-shirt. It's like wolves in sheep's clothing. So I have tons of empathy for women who are really confused right now because they'll meet a man who leads with vulnerability but then ends up not being that person at all. Because the vulnerability is actually being used as a facade to protect them from what they're actually afraid of. So there's a lot of work. I mean, look, you can throw a rock right now in LA or in New York and find a shaman or find somebody who's doing like an ayahuasca ceremony on the weekends with their buddies because they're going deep. Then they come out of it and then they have all these realizations and they're different people. But if you really study that work, study the work of Gabor Mate, you might remember who you are, but it's very easy to forget who you are if you're not constantly doing the work. So the memory of this person becomes a distant memory if you're not practicing it, if you're not actually continually digging it up and looking at it and exploring it. And I don't think that's what's happening here because we're so driven by success, we're so driven by like, the patriarchal cookie of like, oh, if I just get enough power, if I just get enough money, if I'm just good looking enough, if I'm just buff enough, if I'm just whatever, if I just have a nice enough car or beautiful enough house, whatever it is, we're driven by that, that we don't do all the work that's here.

And it's kind of like the whole thing is engineered for that to just keep going. Keeps going. Because you, even if, even if you start doing work that's well intentioned, there's always the possibility that that impulse, whether it's ego, whether it's the patriarchal cookie, as you put it, there's always that problem that it's ready to hijack whatever success you've had and go, look at all the good things that are now gonna come from this. So something that even began with a purity to it. can, you know, I've had to reinforce over and over and over again over the years for myself. Like, I've had to keep such watch on, you know, I make a video and that video came from a very pure place. And then that video, because of where it came from, does really, really well. And then when it does really, really well, I know that's been hijacked. At the point where I've now checked the comments 10 times. Because why am I still checking? You're not here anymore. Yes, and now I'm- Serving a different.

Purpose than what the intention was.

Correct. And if I get nervous now about the next video, because I'm like, well now the next one has to be really good, then I know, oh, I'm fully now into the territory of trying to impress, not connect.

Or if you try to chase the success of that video by making one like it.

Yep.

Which is what all the algorithms are fed on, which is why you keep trying to make the same thing. That's why all the, I mean, a lot of women, when you just look at profiles and dating profiles, look very similar now.

Oh, it's become an entirely memetic situation.

It's, it's. We are creating robots because, again, we're teaching people based on biased algorithms, what gives them the best chance of success or finding love. And so you're combining technology and all these things, and at the end of the day, we're playing games with hearts. Because you strip all that away, what we were truly trying to find is our partner, like a soul mate, a friend. And you have all of this shit just in the way. And I just want to say, I was thinking about what we were just talking about. There's also, I believe, hope. Because I think it can be, in this conversation, it can be very easy to just be like, oh, well, just throw in the towel. Like, how am I ever going to find somebody in this swamp of superficiality? And the hope is that I believe that even the feminist fuckboys, even these men who are abusing their power, the way that they look, their personalities, vulnerability are good. I think we are good. And sure it might be naive or optimistic, but we're all products of our environment, of our families. Nobody has not had any trauma. And We're all just trying to find ourselves. It's the core of addiction. We just want to connect. We just want to be connected to another soul. That's what we have built the world around. And all technology is doing is getting us in the way of connection. You think it's making you more connected. We think like, oh, social media, all of these things, oh, we're gonna get more connected. We're more connected than we've ever been, literally. And yet at the same time, depression is higher than it's ever been, isolation is higher than it's ever been, loneliness is higher than it's ever been. Why? Because we're not actually connecting in the ways that we need to. So I want to bring it back to there's hope because in all of this there's connection. And we can find that, but it requires digging in, Not in a superficial way, not in an LA pseudo spirituality, like, let me do some of this work way, but like digging in in a deeply uncomfortable way where you don't know if there's hope on the other side because you're so dark. Because that's where the truth is. That's the scary shit. That's the stuff that is underneath when a man gets triggered. And what I'll just forget about a man, let me use me. In my experience, in my bubble of social media and my fan base, I'm looked at oftentimes as like this example of like what a man can be or like how a woman should be treated by a man or the way that I talk about my wife or how present I am as a father and all of the things that social media can paint. or that celebrity and status can paint. And yet, I'm an asshole sometimes. There are times when I will say something to my wife, 'cause I'm in my wound, that like if there was a camera on, I would lose all my followers. I'd be canceled in a heartbeat. Because I'll say something out of my like ego that is mean. Luckily, because I do so much work, I can like stop time. I can everything stops and I go, what the f, what am I doing? And I can come back and be like, Whoa, stop, I am so sorry. That is not you. Let me figure this out. And I can do that. But it doesn't stop me from being a dick. It doesn't stop me from being an asshole. It doesn't stop me from having wounds and an ego and from being triggered by something that has nothing to with my amazing wife. That has everything to do with little Justin and the pain that he was in. That is a memory of. It's like when people get their legs amputated, they have phantom pain even though there's no legs there because the nerve endings think that the legs are still attached. That's what trauma is in our bodies. We don't even know half the time that it's our operating system. So we're unconscious. So I say that. Because if I can do it, anyone can do it. I am no different. I am not some anomaly unicorn, as I've heard so many times. I am a dude that has all of the insecurities as every other dude. I just talk about them. I have all the faults. I fall into Mr. Patriarchy sometimes. and I have to get myself out of it. It's not my wife's job, it's my job. Luckily, I have a wife who'll call me on it. But Justin 20 years ago, 15 years ago, I would have absolutely been one of those guys that would have found fault in that and been like, oh no, I don't want that. That's not right. And so I say that to use myself as the example because none of us are immune. If I had your fiance right here, right now, and you were never here and she was never gonna know that anyone heard it, she'd say a similar thing about you. There's no way she couldn't.

Oh, she knows how many times I would have been canceled. Yeah, she's well aware.

But, like, that's the thing. And that's the other thing that's important, I think, for your audience and for all of these women to see, is that, sure, there are men like us that have built platforms and are looked at as a certain way, but we are not the end all, be all. We are not any different or any special. The only difference is I think, at least for me, and I can't speak for you, is that I do the fucking work. And it sucks.

And you're willing to stop time and to put eyes on yourself. And I think what's interesting is, I think all of what you say is certainly extremely relatable for me. And yet, women will say, I so rarely come across a guy. And yet, it's got that level of self-awareness. so here's, here's what I'm curious about, because everything you've said, I think one of the most beautiful things about it is it breeds compassion. And I think it, it will absolutely help women. And I know it has helped women to bridge the gap between them and men and realize that, oh, my God, that, yes, we have differences, but not nearly, they're not nearly as profound as we think they are.

Yeah.

And that I can actually empathize, have compassion for, or even pity some of these behaviors that I have seen as a sign of the enemy or a sign of the other. So it creates that compassion, and compassion can be a beautiful thing, and it can also, if you're not careful, take us to a dangerous place. Because if you get a guy who's too early in his development, that guy can ruin your life.

Yeah. I know where you're going.

So I'm almost curious what your philosophy is here because there's one extreme is, you know, try to convert anyone and everyone. And the other extreme is only search for someone who has arrived at a part of the journey that you have where there's already, you're already kind of in a sense, it will feel like skiing downhill compared to someone else. And the midpoint is, well, it's never gonna be that perfect, but it's just gonna be a bit of both. Where do you sit on that when women are saying, I wish I could meet someone with that level of awareness, albeit flawed, that would be amazing, but I'm not meeting guys like that. So do I need to meet a guy who's earlier on his journey and try to influence that journey, or do I try to meet someone who's already arrived?

Matthew, it's such a complex thing. Again, there's so many variables here. Because again, if they're even watching this video, they know this is the standard, so then they're comparing whoever it is to this, which is the thing we have to be careful of. You can't compare everything, because then you're gonna always feel like you're falling short.

And I know that Audrey did not meet me at a time when, no, there were things that She put up with and didn't put up with in the sense that she would have stayed with me if I stayed like that. But she endured things in me that I look back on now and I'm like, whoa, that was not, you know.

Oh, yeah. So, women have, women are, I want to be careful because when we do the Man in a Podcast, we've joked about this idea of benevolent sexism. So I want to be careful when I say like women are better, but women are much better at having empathy and compassion for our shortcomings than we are for them. It's pretty freaking incredible what women have to put up with and what they do put up with. I will say that I was nowhere near the man I am today when I met my wife. 12 years ago. There's no chance. And she wasn't who she is today 12 years ago. I think it's, I think the only way, the only advice that I have here, because everything that you said is true. A woman, a man, a person has to do their own work first. And I have a feeling that many of the women and men and people who are dating and looking for their loved ones have not done the work. That's my professional and personal observation. And when I say have not done the work, I mean, are you as obsessed with understanding yourself as you are with finding your person? Is it as important for you to understand who you are and why you are as it is for you to find your match? And oftentimes we project out because that's what we're conditioned to do. We're socialized to like go looking for the answer. We'll discover the answer. Now we don't know something, we just Google it or we ask Alexa or Siri. That's how simple it's gotten. We do the same thing in dating and in life. We look out. We have to learn how to look in. Looking in is the most uncomfortable thing. So before we can even get to a place where we're comparing development, because by nature, women are going to be socialized to have more empathy, compassion, sensitivity than men. As we talked about earlier, biologically, I think it's equal. we're trained differently. Men are trained to perceive it as weakness and to see it as feminine, and it can be used against us because other men will police us like when the dude called out your hair. And for women, in many ways, it's a defense mechanism. It's safety. They've had to gather together in community as a response to the trauma that has been inflicted on them. That's their safety. This is why women have face-to-face friendships and men have side-to-side friendships. We can't look each other in the eye.

That's interesting.

Oh yeah, if you look around, go to a coffee shop, go to a place with tea, it's women. When women get together, the first thing they often do is they unload, okay, I have to tell you what's going on in my life. Or this guy, I'm heartbroken. Or they just start crying before they can even, because they're finally safe. When men get together, we sit like this, and then we talk like this. We can't look at each other too long, and then we go back. That's why bars are set up the way that they are. There's something in the middle so that we can watch sports, or there's alcohol. We have a social lubricant, right? Because then that makes it easier for us to make eye contact or connect. Why? Because women make eye contact. Men don't. All that to say, there are all these social factors that are tying into all this stuff. So women are just by nature better at these types of things. But it doesn't mean they've done the work. It doesn't mean the men who maybe aren't as vulnerable as I am or you are or aren't as open, it also doesn't mean that they haven't done the work just because they haven't gotten to the place where they're open and vulnerable. I know incredible men who are never going to be as open and vulnerable as me, who are good and kind and sensitive and who will do anything for a woman, but they're just not gonna walk around and have their emotions on their sleeve. That's okay. That's okay. They're extremely masculine and yet they're sensitive. It's gonna look different for everybody. But before we can even get to a place where we're comparing Or we're judging of like, well, God, that guy, he's not quite there. Well, where are we? In the Baha'i faith, I bring this back to my faith a lot because that is the fundamental belief system in my life that's taught me the most. We're told one of the first things that we have to do is know our own selves. And what leads us to loftiness or a basement? We have to know ourselves first. I can't know you unless I know me. And if I know me, then I know that what you're doing isn't about you, it's about me. And I can come back faster and I can stop time. And the other part of this is that when you have an example, an apple seed and an orange seed, and you put them in your hand, they look the same. But when you plant them and you water them, one turns into an apple tree and one turns into an orange tree. You have no idea where this man that you are dating is going to go or what he's going to develop into when you meet him. What you have to believe in is the seed. And do you think you have an apple tree or do you think you have an orange tree? And that can only come down to feeling and intuition, which is another thing that women are conditioned to have more than men. So, you have to, okay, does he have the qualities and the characteristics that I'm interested in? And let's just say vulnerability or sensitivity is an apple tree. Can that seed grow into a tree? And can I, with my patience and grace and all of the things that I'm good at, can I be steadfast enough and strong enough to allow that thing to grow into a tree? And if you can't, then he's not your person. But you're not just gonna find an apple tree. Nobody's gonna find an apple tree. I was barely a seed.

There's two things that, oh, there's one, there's something you said that all of this has brought up two things for me. One is, I really like that idea that you can have a guy who, let's say, is avoidant in various ways, has behaviors that make him hard to connect with, makes it hard for him to be vulnerable or to own his own stuff. And you can have a woman who's been socialized to be giving and empathetic and nurturing. Now on the surface, it looks like she's way more advanced than he is. because she can go back to her friends and be like, he's doing everything wrong. I'm doing everything right. He needs to fix his shit.

And.

In reality- She brings up a.

Whole 'nother thing, we gotta talk about it one day.

I'm so enjoying this conversation. I've got so many different ways I wanna take it. She then is thinking, the problem is him. But what I know you're getting at, which is 100% agree with, is if she hasn't done the work, then what she's doing is just another way of being. But it's not a standard, it doesn't have any understanding of why, for example, which is extremely common, she continues giving those things to someone who is not in any way filling her up, is not meeting her needs, or is disrespecting her. And so it looks on the surface like doing everything right, doing everything wrong, but because of the lack of understanding of this person has of themselves, there's no real introspection as to why I'm drawn to this person who's being this way, why I continue to give to a person who's being this way, and how I'm evaluating the potential of this person and whether it's rational how much of a pedestal I've put them on. Is there, and the second thing that.

You said, Because there's so little, and we have to acknowledge it, there's so little self-worth. All of us are plagued with this belief system that we are not enough. Men and women, everybody on the planet. Capitalism couldn't exist in a society where we were all enough. So all of us have that, especially women. So every time I've been in a situation and I have more female friends than male friends, where a woman has come to me, the only way I've found to get them out of it is to say, if that was your daughter, what would you say? Or if that was your friend. And for some reason, a woman can then take herself out of herself and say, well, I would never let my friend be with him. Well, then why are you? Because fundamentally, you don't feel like you're enough. You'd never let somebody you love be in that relationship where it's not reciprocated. So why are you letting yourself? It's because we don't love ourselves.

And the interesting detail about that is that your daughter or your best friend, you don't evaluate whether they should allow that treatment based on how great they are.

No.

You purely evaluate it through the lens of self-worth. I love them. They're one-- I love them. I don't want someone to go through that. They deserve it. I love so much. How many times have we heard?

They deserve better. They deserve more. Like, you don't-- you-'re not going, 'Cause.

She looks super pretty. 'Cause my daughter looks super pretty today. She shouldn't have to put up with this.

And she's not making all the excuses. Oh, but he's this and he's this and he-- no, you're just-- you see right through it the second you take it off of yourself. It's so much easier to love somebody else than it is for us to love ourselves, which is why we go back to the work, my wife once said to me, the greatest activism is self activism. The greatest activism is self activism, which is, I think, the thing missing, it's the missing ingredient in all the activism in Los Angeles and a lot of these big cities. Everyone's wearing, you know, you can wear your Black Lives Matter t-shirt, your pride shirts and all of the things, but do you actually believe it or are you doing it because everyone else is? What's your work? That's activism. You have to find what you're passionate about and what you care about, and then you can wear that shirt. Then you can fly that flag. Otherwise, it's just performative, which is the trap, which is the danger. So if you don't do that work and know yourself, you'll never be able to have the love that you need to have for yourself to leave a relationship that isn't fulfilling you.

When you come across someone who's in that stage of development. And as you rightly say, you don't know what they're going to become. There's a world where you were a different, you were the same person that your wife started with.

Yeah.

But you never, you never got there. You never grew. And meanwhile, she's throwing real time at you. And so many of the women that I'm working with There is a real pressure, especially for people who wanna have a family. And there's a real clock there staring at them and they're thinking, I gotta move and I don't wanna waste time with someone based on this idea that they're one day gonna be somewhere. So in a sense, there's a paradox to be managed.

Women date for potential.

Right, and by the way, in a way you always are a little bit. Like you are absolutely both dating the person you're with now and this person that they're gonna grow into.

Sure, but that's very gendered. Do you know many of your male buddies who start dating? Who date a woman and they're like, yeah, she's hot and amazing, and I know that she'll get to this place eventually where she'll be more open and sensitive and share her feelings, or like, we don't, that's not, I think it's a very gendered thing because Women believe in us. Like they believe in who we are. They see our potential. They have to. I think it's one of the things that makes women so fucking amazing. They have to. What's the alternative if you're a woman? Like you have to believe in us. And so I don't think men do that. I think men are deciding. It's like, it's the, I'm sure you hear this a lot, but, I would say, and we've talked about this on my show, that generally women go into dates saying, God, I hope he likes me. And men oftentimes go into dates thinking, I hope I like her. I mean, there you have it.

I could see men evaluating potential in a different way, but When it, when the dynamic is men dating significantly younger women.

Because I think, but the potential is oftentimes, can I make her fit into my lifestyle? Can she fit into my lifestyle?

Or is she gonna grow out of this? I hope she's gonna grow out of this phase, 'cause I'm no longer in that phase and I want, you know.

Like, it's generally from a me place. It's like, oh, I, oh, you know, maybe I can get her to like whitewater rafting or, as opposed to something.

She she can be for her own growth.

Right, it's a centered, it's centered on their world, which is often a complaint that women have with men, right? Because we are brought up, especially with men like you and I who are at the top of the privilege pyramid, we're brought up where the world revolves around us. It's been ingrained into our DNA. So that's how we look at it, that's how we've been trained to look at it. Whereas women have had to mold and adapt themselves around men their entire lives. We don't have to do that stuff. So that's what I mean by.

I get it.

Oftentimes women, I think, date for potential and I don't believe that men date for potential. I think men date for this idea of is she the right one for me.

Now in a sense, you're not entirely, it's not as black and white as don't date for potential because you're, your wife met you and you did have potential and you did in all of these incredible ways, you showed signs that you were growing into this, you were willing to do the work. What do you think? Do you have any advice, difficult as this may be, for women who are dating as to what makes it a good bet on someone's potential versus a misguided bet that's just gonna waste your time because you're investing in someone who's not growing?

There's only one answer and it comes from doing the work and having such a deep knowing of who you are that you're able to use your intuition. There's no other answer that I think can work. I don't think I could give one that's like, oh, well, it's this warning sign or it's this. Or if they do this, I think it comes down to having to have such a strong sense of who you are, what you want, what you don't want, the things that are your hot button topics, your family, like getting into all of that in yourself so that your intuition is your other arm. And then you'll know. I don't think there's another answer. And I think that anything else would be a shortcut and a way to make money or sell videos or like get more likes. I think that there's no other answer. It's an individual relationship and it's completely individual based on what the person is feeling. Because I think, look, in my situation, ours was flipped. I knew immediately that my wife was my person. I knew it in my body. I just knew it. And she had no idea. And she had no idea for nine months. And it was the most torturous nine months of my life.

Because you felt her uncertainty?

Because I felt her uncertainty, because I changed who I was multiple times to try to figure out if being the certain guy would make her certain. My insecurities went through the roof, which only triggered her stuff, and our polarity was completely off. And yet, both of us knew ourselves. And the other thing I'll say, which for some people they will disagree with and that's okay, I believe that you need something greater than yourself in the middle of you and another person. For me, it's God. For someone else, it could be the universe. I don't know, it could be something, but I think human beings left to our own devices can get overcome with ego. And especially in this world of distractions. And so for my wife and I, there was something because we had started to do that work for ourselves, because we didn't have an idea of who we were individually, there was something that was keeping us together despite all of the stuff that was coming up for us that was telling us to separate. At one point, one of my best friends, ironically, one of the men I'm talking about here today when I talk about the men who have this paralysis of choice, this person at the time said, Dude, it shouldn't be this hard. She's not your person. But I knew that she was. I had another friend tell me the same thing. It was 'cause they loved me. They saw that I was in pain. I would cry myself to sleep. at night sometimes because it was so confusing for me because I loved my wife so much and I didn't know what I was doing wrong or why it wasn't working and our polarity was off. And it was because I was trying to change myself and turn myself into a person that I thought she would want. I knew she was mine. What I didn't know at the time was that I was enough as I was. I didn't have to change who I was to get her to fall in love with me. There was already something inside. She saw my seed. She saw that I was an apple tree. And there was something deep inside that was telling her to stay despite her friends telling her the same thing. The best advice we got was when we went to a married couple. This married couple, they were deeply in love. They'd been together for five or six years. Both of them had been divorced. They were the ones that told us that where we were was normal. That this polarity fight, this trying to understand that the tension, all of this is good because you're getting to know each other's characters. You're seeing what the other person is made of. You're seeing how the other person responds. You're doing the work. She'd go off, I'd go off. I remember going to Going for three, I was at one point, it got so intense, I went for three days and slept in a tent in the desert just to like try to clear my head to figure out, am I crazy? It was tough. But I knew because I knew myself that she was my person. So it didn't matter what any of the distractions said, it didn't matter what anyone else said, I was not going to give up.

Yeah, there is this idea that a lot of people say that if it's right, It will be easy. It's terrible advice. It's such different, it's not supported by so many people's experience in the beginning of their relationship.

There are people that have that experience. Sure, there are also people that are seven foot nine. That's not average. That's not normal. We oftentimes measure normality with a use case of an extreme. But go to like anyone who's been married for more than five years or 10 years, it's not easy. It's not supposed to be. Because I believe that when you find the right person, as controversial as it might be, it's supposed to be difficult. Because the right person is going to help me, not heal it for me, heal the parts of me that I need to heal to show up and be my full self for that person.

What's your advice to women who find themselves in the situation where they know, I have someone here who has potential. I like what I'm seeing and we have something that I believe is very special, but there are these barriers. And I am dealing with someone who struggles to open up, who struggles to be vulnerable, who, you know, is not all their behaviors are the behaviors I want. Yeah. What's your advice to women on practically, what does it look like to be an aid in helping someone break down those walls without straying too far into, I'm trying to fix the person. Yeah.

Which is the fairy tale that women have been sold, especially the last 50 years, is, you know, the knight's gonna come to you broken and you have to fix him.

Right. So we want to avoid that, but there are absolutely, there's language that you can use, there's ways of approaching conversations, there's ways of speaking to someone about those things that would make them more receptive to coming closer and opening up. And there are ways that will just shut them down. Could you talk to the differences between the two? Like have you experienced with all the guys you're working with ways that reliably help them to open up versus push them further away.

Well, men interact with men differently than men interact with women. Right. So what will work with a man, like man to man, like if it were you and me, would not work with a woman to a man. So I think that's important just because of socialization. So this is a thing.

Let's go woman to man then.

So one of the complaints.

That you.

Hear a lot from men especially men who are struggling with connection, who are angry at women. One of the things you hear a lot is this idea of emasculation. They feel emasculated, which is not a real word. There's no such thing as emasculation. It's completely bullshit. Emasculation is just simply a man feeling insecure around a woman. A man not being strong enough to handle a woman, feedback from a woman, hearing that maybe he is not doing things the right way. There's no such thing as emasculation, but men are citing that word a lot. Emasculation would mean that my masculinity can be taken away. that somebody else can decide that I'm not a man. Bullshit, it's not true, I'm a man. You can't take it away from me, you can't emasculate me. So that's the first step. Any advice I would give to a woman trying to course correct or hold space or who has a man who is struggling with something and she believes in the seed, he's gonna become an apple tree, but he's not there. is the same advice I'd give to anybody who's dealing with interpersonal conflict. Do you ever respond well to somebody who's attacking you? No. Doesn't matter if you're a man or a woman. Our walls go up. It's like the drawbridge comes up and the castle doors close and we put our shields on and we deflect. And because us men oftentimes don't have a lot of experience and going into the uncomfortable parts of ourselves, we don't know how to take feedback, let alone attack. And it makes a lot of sense that oftentimes when women get to the point where they are speaking to men about these things, they're frustrated because they feel unheard or the men haven't been listening to them or they have all of the different microaggressions and traumas that have happened and all the previous relationships and they're manifesting in this man And she's trying to get through to him and she's frustrated and the man's like, what the f, dude? Like, what do you, and they feel attacked and the shields go up and then nobody can hear each other. My wife and I have arguments like that to this day. There are times where we catch ourselves, we did it just the other night, where both of us were tired and exhausted. Next piece of advice, never have a conversation when you're tired. Never have a conversation about anything that matters with the person you love when you are tired. or exhausted or have been traveling.

That's good.

And for many of you women hungry, just don't do it. Wait. Have a bite of food, get your blood sugar up, take a nap, save the conversation till the next day. It will always go better. But even for my wife and I, there's times when we're both in our stuff and she's frustrated because she hasn't been able to get to me and she'll come at me And I'll just, we'll go into my, like, my Iron Man suit will go up. And suddenly, like, Tony Stark's gone. I'm Iron Man now. And you can't, I'm impenetrable. In fact, it's all gonna bounce right back to you. That's what us men do. That's what we've been trained to do. That's why you went to the bathroom and you washed off your hair that day. And the next day, you were ready for a battle if that happened again. Like, that's what we do. That's how we've trained our young boys to become men. to fight like that. So in any situation, I think you have to hold space and I think you have to think about why you're having the conversation. Do you love the person? Do you believe in the person? Are you trying to help them see something that maybe you can see? You first have to know why and the next piece of it is you have to give it with love. And it's very hard to give a piece of constructive criticism or advice or to help guide somebody with love, because oftentimes it's coming from a place of hurt in ourselves. So it requires some like Jedi training, master class, Yoda shit, which again, women, I think, are better at. So I would say, especially for a man, know that the chances are he'll be defensive. And then in the off chance that he isn't, It can be an amazing conversation and maybe you'll fall even more in love with him if he can take the feedback. And if you know he's gonna be defensive, you gotta find another way in. I don't believe that men want to hear they're doing something wrong. I don't think men want to hear that they're broken, that they're toxic. That's why I don't say toxic masculinity. I don't believe masculinity is toxic. I believe there's toxicity, but the medicine can also become the poison. I think that we have to invite people into conversations across the board and culture in general. We've forgotten that we are not antagonistic. We're all trying to get to the same place. We're all human beings and nobody really knows better than anybody else. We all have our biases. We all have our shit that we're bringing to the table. And if I come and I can invite you into something, you're much more likely to listen to me. So what does inviting in look like? It starts with vulnerability. This is how this made me feel. Hey, I've noticed this. You're amazing. Like, start with compliments. Make the man feel good. Sure, there might be women that say something like, well, we shouldn't have to coddle men. Okay, don't. Let's see how it goes. Like, we are who we are. If you really want that to turn into the apple tree and you think that there is a seed there, then do your best to come from a place of love and self-assuredness and self-confidence and offer it. But like, spend a little more time and like make the plate look good, like at a nice restaurant. Oftentimes the food is the same when you go to a three-star and a four-star, but the presentation is a little bit different. Well, maybe we want the presentation. Maybe my ego in this place today needs the plate to look good so that I can digest the food. There's nothing wrong with that. And if you love this person, are you willing to go that extra mile to try? If they reject the plate, it's not on you. If they don't want the food, that's not on you. And that's the thing that I think that a lot of women need. to hear is that they can't change. I tell the men the same thing. You can't change a person. You can invite the person in. You can ask the person to consider your side of things, but you can't make the person change. They'll always change back. We have cell memory. We'll always go back to who we were. So you want a person to change so you can get married? Great, you get married, then you have a kid, and then they go back to who they were. We're rubber bands. If you don't work on the trauma, the underlying trauma, you bounce right back. So you don't want to actually marry that person. You don't want that person to transform for you. You want real change. You want lasting change. You want an invite in to a joint perspective so that you can build this thing together. And if they don't want to do that, you can't make them. And you have to love yourself enough to leave. And that's the hardest thing for women, I believe.

I love what you just said. And I think that there's something I want to pick up on, because I think it's really important. So many people, where they get really frustrated and hurt and confused, is they feel they lack closure in a situation, and they're desperate for some kind of closure. But what you just said, that idea of preparing the plate the best you can, it's still got the thing on it that you want someone to, to consume that truth that you need them to hear. But saying it in the best way you can say it in a way that they're most receptive to. I think one thing that can help people overcome any resentment they feel at having to coddle someone's ego and do all of that is that if you actually do that and they reject the plate, that's actually a really nice form of closure.

It's actually, yeah.

Because you can say, I really did everything I could to make that palatable and to make it something they could hear. And I did it in the most loving and compassionate way. And they still weren't able to hear it. That's the best kind of closure I can hope for. It can hurt sometimes, unnecessarily so, when we feel that we have argued with someone in a way that wasn't productive. And then we go away feeling like, well, if I had done it a bit different, would it have gone a different way? And then we kind of, we create a lack of closure for ourselves, but doing it the way you just suggested means you really can walk away and go, I was the best version of me in that scenario.

But what is even closure? What is closure for most people? All closure is for most people is somebody else telling them they're not bad. If we broke up, I just want to know that it wasn't my fault or I'm not bad. Or like, I just need closure. What do you actually need? You want one last kiss? You want to sleep with the person one last time? You want to hear that you're not a bad person? It all comes from a lack of self, generally. Sometimes the best breakups don't have closure. You have to close your own wound. It's not somebody else's job. I just had a girlfriend go through this. We had a very similar conversation. And the guy wasn't emotionally capable and they broke things off and they didn't talk like for three weeks after that. And they had been, they just broke up. And she was like, But this is so weird. I don't have closure. And I'm like, It's not your job to have closure. You did everything right. We wanna bring him in so that he can apologize. No, he will come back eventually. You do you. You love you. And I did the same thing. And I said, what would you say to my daughter Maya if that happened to her? What would you say to my wife Emily? And it's always the same advice. No, I did everything right. He wasn't ready. He wasn't right. What he did was hurtful. And they start to think about all those things. And you go down that path. and you see the body language shift, and suddenly there's like, yeah, and there's a little bit of righteous anger in there, which good, you should be fucking angry sometimes. That's a good antidote. You should, you need to allow yourself to experience the anger. So many women don't even get a chance to because angry women, men are afraid of angry women, so they have to, again, that's how women have been conforming to us for history. So you feel a little bit of that anger, you go through that journey, and you're like, oh wait, Yeah, yeah, wait a second. I did get closure. I already had it.

Right, it's like waking up.

You already had it. All texting him and asking to meet again is gonna do is make you feel like shit. And that comes from knowing oneself.

So look, I wanna firstly, I wanna just talk to everyone about your book just so that everyone knows the book that's the newest one, and then If you have a minute, I'd love to just answer a couple of member questions. Oh yeah, no, I'm good.

You're good.

So, I'm good, I'm plenty of time. The book is Boys Will Be Human. Your previous book was called Man Enough, right? Yeah, it was for adult men. So that was for adult men. The podcast is also something you should check out.

Which you gotta come and join us. Love to.

You gotta come do an episode with us. Love to, yeah. Anytime. the new book is called Boys Will Be Human. And it's really cool, man, because this is like, I was literally thinking for, I love the way you frame it up in terms of words that young boys can relate to. Yeah. But it's a, you know, you're, you're preparing a plate for young boys that they're able to consume with all of that goodness and all of that truth that they need to hear.

So it's so much of it is about the plate. And it's the book that I wish I had when I was that age. And it's the book that I wish a lot of the men who maybe are in the lives of the women that are watching this would have read when they were young. Because it takes a lot of work for a man to remove his armor. But if we can get to boys at 11 years old and teach them about consent, if we can talk to them about what it means to be intelligent and smart, what it means to be respectful, to embrace the qualities that women are so strong in, their quote unquote feminine qualities, which all of us have, right? It's not just for women, it's not just for men. We all have these qualities. And if we can teach these boys how to be safe spaces for themselves, then this world will finally be a safe space for everybody. And that's the point of the book.

Well, I wouldn't encourage you, you know, when I was thinking about this book, I was like, every one of you should grab this for someone in your life, you know, whether it's a nephew, whether it's a son, whether it's a friend, someone that you know can benefit from it. I really want to encourage you to go out and grab it. Like I said, it's called Boys Will Be Human. Check it out. And it just came out in the UK.

Just came out in the UK.

Brand new in the UK.

It's available in America.

Available everywhere but just came out in the UK, which is exciting because I know a ton of you are in the UK. Justin, thank you. This has been really, really, you know, I think it's different to any interview I've ever done for our people. And your level of honesty, the level of depth and care and passion that has gone into your work is so evident. because it's clear that none of these things, you've come to your conclusions about things through some effort over the years. And I don't take that lightly. And there's so much heart that's gone into it, and it clearly comes from a very loving place. And it's been powerful, man. It's been powerful for me to hear. I cannot wait to read the comments from people who have been listening, because I know that people are gonna have gotten so much out of this. And it's really been a unique interview of all the interviews I've done. This has been very unique. I really appreciate you being here.

Thanks, man.

Thanks for listening, everybody. Don't forget, grab yourself a copy of Boys Will Be Human, Justin's new book. And if you do wanna listen to the full interview and the exclusive Love Life Club member Q&A with Justin, come over to joinlovelife.com, grab your free 14 day trial. And don't only check out this interview, but check out all of the other interviews I've done inside the Love Life Club with Guy Winch and Esther Perel, Dr. Ramani, Emily Morse, you name it. We've had the best of the best inside the Love Life Club. And we've also got masterclasses. You can ask your questions to me on a live session in the next month. All sorts of fun stuff going on in there right now. Go check it out by going to joinlovelife.com and set up your free profile. We'll see you over there. Thank you for listening and I look forward to speaking to you again in the next episode of Love Life.